All the Useless Things These Hands Have Done

I have lots of little anecdotes, unfortunately most of them are really sad. Still, there are a few that won't turn your hair white.

A few years back I worked in a small office with three other guys. A guy who I'll call Steve worked across the open air hall from us. One sunny week in spring, Steve had a full remodel of his office going. While the drywall guys were inside getting dusty, Steve decided to refinish a desk. Now, Steve wasn't the handiest guy in the world, or a guy with a lot of follow-through, and this wasn't a grand old desk that you'd normally bother to refinish. So, right off the bat the situation's a little off. There was no power in his office, so Steve ran an extension cord from inside our office out to the hallway where he was sanding the desk.

That was Steve's mistake.

It didn't take long for John, a friend at work, and I to wander over to the window to watch Steve work the orbital sander. From there, it only took about a minute before we started randomly pulling the plug on the extension cord. It was more fun than you might think. We were peeking through the blinds and basically had a silent movie playing out in front of us. We'd pull the plug and Steve would look down quizzically like a dog who lost track of his water dish, then he'd give the sander a shake or two and we'd plug it back in.

This is where things got brilliant.

One of us, we still can't remember who, had one of the best ideas to occur to mankind since putting meat in fire. "Hey, lets only pull the plug when he's holding the sander with his right hand!" It was the moment John and I were destined for, and we were ready.

We waited until he had been using his left hand for a while, then, with one of us spotting through the blinds and one of us with a hand on the cord, we waited until he switched to his right, then *ponk*, no power. He did his confused dog thing, shook it, etc. When he went to check that the sander was plugged into the cord, he switched it to his left, and the thing came back on. Steve shrugged and started sanding again. After a minute, he went to his right hand again, and *ponk*, no power.

After the third round of power failures, his ex-stripper assistant came out, and he (again, we're watching a silent movie) explained his right/left problem. She took the sander and, hey, it worked fine for her no matter what hand she used.

He took over again, and still no luck. The assistant wandered away to drink diet coke and flirt with the contractors leaving Steve alone with his problems. About this time our boss came by to figure out why we weren't actually earning our pay. Our boss was a pretty 'down to business' kind of guy, but when we explained the situation, he told us to carry on and report in when we were finished. Steve's popularity was really working out well for him.

After a few more tries Steve just gave up on his right hand and tried to power through with his left. He'd lean way into it, try all kinds of positions to ease the fatigue, but of course nothing worked. He took a break and went inside after a few more minutes and John and I went back to work. I can't remember if we left the cord plugged in or not.

He never actually finished the desk, but that's hardly our fault. There was about a 10% chance of Steve actually completing that task anyway.